Vacant
A metronome beats hollow time.
Hollow time, high time… I was on my way. Until everything went a little pale and flipped.
And now my funds run low and I sit lazy and restless.
But I have always been restless… Does it matter what I do between bouts?
Writers create fictions, with ideas and imagination. They weave a narrative to join together those thoughts into something that can be crunched up and processed by our waiting brains. But we are all writing, piecing together the events and happenings in our lives. The truth is in the telling.
And somewhere something that I might have missed is shaping the edges of my space. And above, resting, are the closed eyes of a pretty face.
So what have I written, and what have I done? What events populate the brief description of my life? oh dear, I guess an exclamation will have to do. To surmise is to surprise. To stay awake is to stay inside. To try is to cry, for tears will have to be shed. Tears and blood, flowing side by side in our veins, beat round by the piston heart. Don’t stop, not just yet.
You, who are afraid without realizing, who goes round each corner to find another, who crests each hill to see the next still higher, and all the while getting slowly tired.
Hollow.
The metronome beats like a bored heart, unaware of excitement or stress. I am less accustomed to this peace, this metronome peace that could be a blessing, could be a curse. I wouldn’t know. I should maybe know something by now but no such luck. I luxuriate in the not-knowing of so many things, in the not-doing of so many acts, in the not-being in so many persons.
The stasis of many. A population viewed from so far above that their minuscule movements have no significance. Lying in the summer grass and watching the insects at work I try to trace their starting points and paths, their aims and purposes, but I cannot follow. I cannot follow, I can only race my own random race. I can only seem to wander along some aimless dim path, with maybe basic rules sending me back and forth.
Backspace backspace backspace. if only I could backspace my actions, even my thoughts. Our thoughts are surely a different class from our actions, as we don’t treat them with the same sense of judgement. it’s a s if they are out of our control, that we do not choose to have our ideas as they arrive, that they are almost spontaneously triggered from what we see and feel. But we are not independent viewers, we are tied to and involved in the world, and our minds are both producer and product of reality. Therefore we should treat out thoughts like actions, and regard our ideas with the same critical analysis. Doesn’t this feel futile though? Well feeling of course would have to come into it. Our emotional state is the colour of our ideas, but more too. Fear is not an idea, but an anxious sense of threat that gives rise to ominous thoughts.
So how responsible are we for the stream of consciousness that animates our minds? Should we apply moral judgement to all of them like a devout Christian convinced of his own guilt? Or is it only when thoughts turn to actions that ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ can be applied. Well then it would follow that the ‘turning’ of thought to action would require close scrutiny, as maybe there is a disconnect there in the casual chain of a responsible act. We must surely base our ethical judgments on behaviour… but all the same I think we generally accept that the notion of intent is not only pertinent but crucial. The difference between an accident and a deliberate act is the idea and chain of responsibility that preceded it.
Shared awareness of the rules. Maybe that’s what underlies. But deeper still, assumptions about how people do act, and following, how people ‘should’ act.
The phone rings. Short conversation. Plans for tomorrow materialize. My standard basic reluctance has to be pushed aside to accept. Did I listen to what I was feeling? Without real plans I cannot say no, I have no reason. And I need the money. But there is always that urge to stand aside and think about it. It’s like the relief of not having to do something right now. Like suddenly realizing that the paper is not due for another week and immediately clearing out for the day. But then, what did you do that day, or the next day, or every day until suddenly the paper is due tomorrow and still only half done?
Where was I? Where am I? I think perhaps trying to work out some basic assumptions by scrawling and etching, a child doodling with crayons on the kitchen wall. Is all is all. I will go hide in the vague suggestiveness of lyrics. That’s the point isn’t it? Exact facts are not as interesting. Language is limited. Emotion and feel can be stimulated, suggested into life, but not forced into being by a formula. Empathy. The resonation of emotion.
The wound coil still. Potential in waiting. Behind the scenes, behind the curtains, tucked away like a nuclear device hidden in a cupboard. A ten megaton store of energy. That’s what I want to be… potential. Never mind the kinetic hiss of sound and light. Fill instead with psychological possibilities. The idea of ideas, the freedom to feel free, without the baggage of asking what freedom is or means. Time for bed, time to sink into a forest of leafing dreamery and well worn tortured mindmaps.
